


The Black Dog

by vanillafluffy



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Attempted robbery, Eddie Brock may or may not be a dog person, Gen, Venom is a dog, poop jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 14:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: For the prompt, "Venom is Eddie's big, slobbery dog who eats everything."





	The Black Dog

_No good deed goes unpunished._ It’s his first thought as he surveys his trashed apartment, followed closely by _What the hell was I thinking?!_.

Clearly, Eddie hadn’t been thinking--Anne warned him more than once that being tender-hearted was going to get him in trouble, and now it has. There’s garbage strewn around his apartment and a couch cushion has exploded all over the living room. Looking into the bathroom, he can see the shower curtain’s been yanked down, and the rod with it. There’s also gooey puddle of puke on the area rug. Great.

“Five minutes,” he says in disbelief. “I went downstairs to check the mail and you did all this in five minutes?”

The creature looks up from another sofa cushion it’s in the process of disemboweling. Doesn’t look ashamed in the slightest.

It’s allegedly a dog--at least, that’s what the vet swore to him while sweet-talking Eddie into adopting it and saving its life. By its size, it could as easily be a Shetland pony that never had a haircut. Or a poorly socialized gorilla. Maybe even the missing link (but a link to what from what?!).

“Okay, okay,” Eddie mutters. First things first. Clean up the mess. 

_Note to self, buy more paper towels. Get a trash can with a lid. Might have to keep it bungee’d on. Put the shower curtain back up. Check free paper for a new couch. Get Dr Skirth to pay for it--yeah, that’ll be the day. And how much does it eat? This behemoth is going to eat me out of house and home. Hell, I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t actually eat the house._

“I guess we’d better go get you some dog food,” Eddie addresses the canine, who wags his plumy tail. “Maybe then you won’t try to eat the furniture. Better take this out, too, while I’m at it….” 

He ties up the trash bag. As soon as he opens the door to the hall, the black dog surges to its feet. Eddie drops the bag in the hallway, almost managing to close the door before the dog gets there. It slams into him, he slams into the door, the door slams closed and Eddie gasps for breath. It’s like being tackled by a sack of cement. 

“Hold still, we’re not going anywhere until you’ve got a leash on,” Eddie tells it firmly. 

The dog looks less than impressed, but allows Eddie to clip the lead to the collar buried in its ruff. It doesn’t try to drag him down the stairs--maybe it can smell the bag of trash and has hopes of a second helping if he behaves. 

When Eddie lofts the bag into the dumpster out back, the beast gives him a disgusted look.

After that, trying to get it to follow him to Mrs. Chen’s store is like trying to drag a dump truck with the brakes on. It’s stubborn, and although Eddie hasn’t put the beast on a scale, he has a sneaking suspicion that pound for pound, it’s nearly as big as he is.

“Look, you--I saved your life. And even though you wrecked my apartment, I’m still going to take care of you, so how about you play nice, huh?” He feels idiotic, talking to the dog like it might actually understand him--damn thing probably doesn’t have two brain cells rubbing together under all that fur. “You know, you’re gonna get really hungry if we just stand here all night. Let’s go--there’s something in it for you, I promise.”

Whether the argument has swayed the dog, or whether it feels a need to christen a few light poles, Eddie doesn’t know, but the big black hairball condescends to move in the direction Eddie wants to go, pausing to sniff and pee on interesting objects along the way.

“I’ve got to come up with a name for you, too,” Eddie mutters. “What do you call a dog that looks like a cross between the Tasmanian Devil and the Hound of the Baskervilles? You’re living off me, and as far as I can tell, all I’m going to get out of it is bills. I oughta call you Parasite.”

He’s going to grab one of the free community papers from the box outside the store, but it’s empty. Damn, he’d been hoping to check the sale ads for a sofa.

“I got your paper right here, Eddie,” says a familiar voice.

He met Maria when he first moved to the neighborhood. She’s a street person--her bipolar condition hasn’t responded to meds, and she hasn’t been able to hold a job--Eddie enjoys their conversations. Even with all the difficulties she faces, she’s smart and determined and keeps going. He respects that.

“Holding it for ransom?” Acquiring the free papers and selling them to passersby is a source of income for her. 

“No, just a small service charge. Is that your dog? I never saw you with a dog before--what’s his name?”

“I don’t know yet.” Eddie sighs. “I just got him a couple hours ago. I was interviewing a vet, and she talked me into adopting him. He’s already eaten half my couch.”

Maria laughs. As usual, she has a book of crossword puzzles on her lap, and as he fumbles for her ‘service charge’, she asks, “I need a poison…five letters, I know the third letter is ‘n’. I thought it was cyanide, but they spell it with too many vowels.”

Eddie mulls it over for a moment. “Venom?”

The dog barks.

“That fits!” Maria erases something, then scribbles on the page. “That means nineteen down is ‘vile’…the clue was ‘unpleasant’--I thought maybe ‘bile’--thank you, Eddie!” She hands over one of the papers and stashes the bill he gives her in some hidden inner pocket among her layers. 

“Venom,” she repeats, and again the dog barks. Then it steps forward and starts licking her face.

“Stop that, you!” Eddie hauls on the leash to no avail.

“Venom, no!” Maria hollers, and immediately, the dog backs off and sits at Eddie’s side like a big plush toy. “You see, Eddie, you need to use his name to get his attention. Otherwise, you’re just making noise. Somebody gave me a fish taco for lunch, he probably smelled that.”

“Venom? His name is Venom?” The beast’s tail is wagging.

“Well, obviously,” she says, as if he’s slow. “He’s listening to us now, isn’t he?”

Mrs. Chen is friendly enough with Eddie, but she’s aghast at the sight of Venom. “Are you kidding? You got a Tibetan Mastiff? That’s the biggest dog in the world! You live on Tater Tots and beer. That dog is gonna starve to death with you!”

“That depends…on the nutritional content of a couch.” There’s a small selection of pet food near the back. Eddie ambles back there and starts loading cans into his basket.

“He ate your couch? You gotta give him lots of exercise. Then all he’ll do is sleep on the couch. I saw that on ‘The Dog Whisperer’.”

“I thought you had cats.”

“I do, but that Cesar Milan is one silver fox!” Mrs. Chen gives a smug chuckle, then, “Oh no! No, you don’t!”

While Eddie concentrates on getting enough food to sate Venom’s appetite, the dog has wandered over to the next aisle, where it’s deposited a rank pile of crap the size of a football.

“You gotta clean that up! Your dog, your mess--you hear? Rags in the back.”

“Thanks a lot,” Eddie grumbles to Venom as he heads for the mop closet next to the small restroom. That’s another complication to his life--now he’ll have to start carrying bags to clean up in his dog’s wake. He wishes he’d thought through the ‘Adopt a dog’ idea instead of jumping into it.

He’s got everything scooped up when the shop’s bell jingles at another customer’s entry. 

“Your taxes are due!” The man glaring at Mrs. Chen has a gun, and for a moment, Eddie is frozen.

Venom snarls at him--the guy half-turns, the gun swinging in their direction, and Venom is about to launch himself for the gunman’s throat. He's liable to get all of them shot--

Eddie doesn’t think. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do until he’s done it--the wad of cloth and crap hits the other man squarely in the face, sticking til the would-be extortionist claws it away. As he’s flailing at the bio-weapon, the gun goes off, shattering the store window.

The guy drops the gun. Eddie jumps forward, kicking it away, then shoves the man to the floor. He’s making whimpering noises, trying to wipe his face with his shirt.

Seconds later, the door bounces open and a uniformed cop rushes in, gun drawn. She looks from Mrs. Chen to the writhing man on the floor, to Eddie, to the still-agitated Venom.

“Venom, sit,” Eddie orders, and for a wonder, the beast does.

Between Mrs. Chen and Eddie, they explain what happened. The cop’s partner arrives--he’d been parking the car--and retrieves the gun. “Well, well, if it isn’t Joe Morrison,” says the second cop. “We’ve been looking for him for a while. You’re going away for a long time, Joey-boy, especially if this is the gun you shot that clerk at the drugstore with.”

“Just don’t let that bear eat me,” says the hapless bandit and lets them take him away..

“Good thing you were here,” Mrs. Chen concedes when things have settled down again. “Now I just gotta get the damn window fixed. Lotta money. Big pain in my ass. Insurance? Hah, be lucky if I get anything after the deductible.” She’s got a copy of the yellow pages on the counter as she talks, looking for a company that offers 24-hour service. “Rotten luck.”

“At least you didn’t get shot,” Eddie points out. “Even if you just got shot a little, I’ll bet the hospital bill would cost a helluva lot more than replacing your window.”

“Hmph,” she snorts. “So, you’re getting those? Okay, with sales tax, your total is twenty-four fourteen.”

“What? How do you get that?”

“Four cans of dog food, a quart of milk, a bag of Tater Tots and three loaves of bread.”

“I’m not getting any bread!” Eddie protests.

“He is.” She points. Behind him, Venom has decimated a rack of baked goods. Scraps of plastic mixed with chunks of bread are strewn along the aisle. 

He grimaces. “Fine.”

“I’m telling you, you want Cesar Milan. Go to the library and get the DVDs so you can train that thing before he really does try to eat somebody. Here's a bag, pick that up and take it with you.”

Maria has moved her patch out from under the broken window. There are shards of glass where she must have shaken out her blankets. “Are you guys okay? You’re so lucky those cops were driving by right then--I was scared something bad was going down.”

“Me, too,” Eddie confesses. Then he tells her what actually happened, and she laughs as he recounts how he’d used dog crap as a means to thwart Joe Morrison’s attempted robbery.

“Good boy, Venom!” She loves on the dog, who’s clearly eating it up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. On their way home, Eddie addresses Venom. “Maria thinks you’re great, Mrs. Chen thinks you’re trainable, and I think you’re costing me money every time I turn around. So far, you’ve rung up a couch, dog food and three loaves of bread. Did you think if you ate the plastic, your poop would bag itself? It doesn’t work that way.

“So, tomorrow I need to find a new couch and go to the library. And get more dog food, probably. And see if I can snag some bags to clean up after you with. You’d better be worth it, Venom. So far, I still think you’re a parasite.”

Venom is gloriously unconcerned by his host’s mutterings. As far as he’s concerned, he can do whatever he wants.

 

…


End file.
